This is the reason why one of the campaign organisers joked: “Let’s just put a paper bag on our head and we’ll be safe from facial recognition surveillance”.

We ask: what would it be like to go about our daily lives with the paper bag on our head? Do we need to use a paper bag to protect our faces from creepy recognition technologies? Is this the society we want to live in?

In a world that remains dominated by ableism, it could be challenging to love, to cross the street, to merely interact.

Collectively, a #PaperBagSociety becomes a dystopian reality, a metaphor for the way biometric mass surveillance suppresses our choices, our speech and our freedoms.

We realised this could be a great imagination exercise for anyone wanting to understand better why we need a world free from intrusive technologies that track our bodies and behaviour.

This is how the #PaperBagSociety challenge was born.

The #PaperBagSociety is a social media challenge part of the #ReclaimYourFace campaign. The challenge invites everyone to share on social media the impact of living life with a paperbag on the head.
Using absurd comedy, this action aims to draw attention to why the heavy burden of avoiding creepy biometric surveillance technologies in public spaces should not fall on us, the people.

Instead, the action emphasises that an alternative future is possible. There are solutions to prevent a paper bag society: we must ban biometric mass surveillance across the EU and beyond.

Be part of the #PaperBagSociety challenge!

1. Go for a stroll in a publicly accessible space (public square, on the street, in a train station, a supermarket, a cafe, a stadium, shopping mall etc).
   2.Put a paper bag on and try to live in the public space.
2. Take a video or a photo of the experience and share it on social media.
3. Make sure to tag #ReclaimYourFace & #PaperBagSociety and explain to your friends why we must ban biometric mass surveillance.

P.S. First and above all: make sure you don’t put yourself or others in danger. Keep it cool.

P.S.2: Are you lucky enough to be a citizen in an EU country? VOTE to BAN biometric mass surveillance !

Το άρθρο Living in a #PaperBagSociety εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο R•U.

As of today Reporters United is the first newsroom in Greece to become a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). GIJN is the world’s leading international association of investigative reporting organizations. It supports and promotes training, collaboration and best practices among journalists from around the world, as well as efforts for free access to documents and data. 

GIJN’s global network now numbers 211 organizations from 82 countries all over the world. Along with Reporters United, seven more organizations from Brazil, Zambia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Colombia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka joined GIJN in March.

As a member of GIJN, Reporters United acquires the right to participate in voting on issues brought before the full membership by the Board of Directors.

Every two years, GIJN organizes the Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC), “the world’s largest international gathering of investigative reporters”. The most recent Conference was held in 2019 in Hamburg, with the presence of journalists from Reporters United, while the next one is scheduled to take place in Sydney, Australia, in November 2021.

The new members were approved by a unanimous decision of the GIJN Board of Directors in early March. They were selected by a group of a total of 40 organizations that have applied to join the network over the past six months.

“This is an extraordinary group of journalists,” noted GIJN Executive Director David Kaplan. “They range from public-interest newsrooms in Europe, South Asia, and Africa to an FOI center in Brazil and a UK university data journalism program.”

Membership in GIJN is open to nonprofits, NGOs, and educational organizations, or their equivalent, that actively work in support of investigative reporting and related data journalism.

Read more about the new members of GIJN here and find out more about the network on its official website.

Το άρθρο Reporters United joins the Global Investigative Journalism Network! εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο R•U.

Biometric data are data about our bodies and behaviours, which can divulge sensitive information about who we are. For example, our faces can be used for facial recognition to make a prediction or assessment about us – and so can our eyes, veins, voices, the way we walk or type on a keyboard, and much more.

Governments, police forces and corporations are using recording devices (like CCTV cameras) and facial recognition software to gather our unique biometric data. They track us by using our unique characteristics in order to permanently identify each of us. The blanket capture of every person’s biometric data in public spaces like parks, train stations and shops simply for trying to live our lives is biometric mass surveillance.  

The processing of any biometric data is already prohibited in the EU. However, EU law allows some very problematic exceptions to this general prohibition. Powerful actors take advantage of this legal confusion by introducing – outside of democratic oversight – these harmful technologies in our public spaces, dehumanising and treating us all as walking barcodes.

“Europeans have a proud and diverse history of rising up against injustice: the fight for  universal suffrage, the Solidarno (Solidarity) workers’ movement, and so much more. ść Today, we launch a 1-million person petition that asks the EU to protect everyone from the  harms of facial recognition and other biometric mass surveillance. By doing this, the  Reclaim Your Face campaign fights for a future where people can live freely, express, think  and organise without fear.”, says Ella Jakubowska from European Digital Rights.

The coalition has already built up evidence of vast and systemic abuses of people’s biometric data across Europe and is successfully challenging such deployments. Serbian authorities are surveilling the population on the streets of Belgrade. Italian authorities targeted migrant communities with biometric surveillance systems in the city of Como, and despite the fact that the practice was declared illegal, they are now trying to introduce it in other cities. In Greece, national authorities are investigating the use of biometric surveillance during police stops. In France, civil society fought in court the use of biometric mass surveillance targeting high schools and protesters. In the Netherlands, national authorities criticised biometric mass surveillance in supermarkets. The Reclaim Your Face coalition has been essential in challenging these investigations. For example Homo Digitalis triggered data protection investigations in Greece and Bits of Freedom supported statements by national authorities against biometric mass surveillance in the Netherlands.

However, it has become clear that we need to act united, across countries, at European level. The ECI represents the voice of those who oppose a dystopian future and instead want a future in  which choices are made by us, not by algorithms, in which our bodies belong to us, in which we are  not discriminated against based on how we look, how much money we have, or where we are from,  and in which we have equity and justice.

The ECI needs to collect 1 million signatures in at least 7 EU countries during the next year.  Succeeding will oblige the European Commission to respond to our formal demand for a new law  and open a debate among the Members of the European Parliament.

This is a truly unique opportunity for all EU citizens to request a law that protects them by outlawing biometric surveillance practices in public spaces. A ban is our only hope to prevent harms that arise with the identification and judgment of people based on their face, body, features and behaviour.

European citizens have a historical chance to stop the harm before biometric mass surveillance becomes permanent in our society.

Το άρθρο ReclaimYourFace initiative calls Europeans to take a stand against biometric mass surveillance εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο R•U.

The Outlaw Ocean Project has so far covered five seas and 14 countries, extending across Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, South America and the Middle East.

Ian Urbina has been working as an investigative journalist for over two decades. His stories have been adapted into feature films, while the rights for The Outlaw Ocean have been secured by Netflix and Leonardo Di Caprio.

Ian is also a member of the Reporters United Advisory Board, advising on stories relating to shipping and the fishing industry, subjects which remain outside the scope of most Greek media despite Greece’s powerful presence in the sector (or perhaps because of it).

The Outlaw Ocean Project has resulted in eight front-page stories in the New York Times, and a New York Times best-selling book which has been published in 11 countries.  

In the course of writing The Outlaw Ocean, Ian recounted the story of a Burmese migrant who had been shackled by the neck on a trawler and enslaved at sea for 3 years. He shadowed a Tanzanian stowaway who, discovered at sea by an angry crewmember, was set overboard on a raft and left to die.

The first story in the Outlaw Ocean series, which was published in the New York Times in 2015, opens on the Greek island of Chios, following the eventful life of a ship, the Dona Liberta, which found itself for a significant period in Greek hands. The story received the 2015 George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting.

Το άρθρο Exclusive collaboration with the Outlaw Ocean Project εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο R•U.

The documentary included interviews with the Greek State Minister of State George Gerapetritis, the Associate Professor of Contemporary History and International Politics at the University of Peloponnese, Konstantina Botsiou, and the Mayor of Kalymnos, Dimitris Diakomichalis (Kalymnos is an Eastern Aegean island, near the Turkish coast).

Additional shooting took place with fishermen from Kalymnos in the sea area off Imia, a pair of small uninhabited islets in the Aegean Sea, situated between the Greek island chain of the Dodecanese and the southwestern mainland coast of Turkey. Imia were the object of a major crisis in Greek-Turkish relations in 1996, which brought the two countries close to conflict.

The documentary was created by Michael Unger, Arte senior foreign correspondent. The production and research were conducted by journalists Alexia Tsagkari, Thodoris Chondrogiannos and Stavros Ioannidis. 

Το άρθρο R•U produced Arte’s reportage on the Greece-Turkey crisis εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο R•U.

The 4th CIJ Logan Symposium and Reporters United are organising a panel which will address one of the underexplored sides of the far-right phenomenon: deeper ties, direct and indirect, between Golden Dawn and “legitimate” public institutions such as the police and the justice system among others. The panel consists not only of investigative journalists but also of speakers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds who formed an informal alliance, instrumental in demonstrating that Golden Dawn was a criminal organisation and not merely a political party.

Amidst the global pandemic, the CIJ Logan Symposium, as well as this panel, will be online. The panel will take place on November 17, 2020, at 3 p.m. (GMT). Visit CIJ’s registration page for more information on how to attend and to find out more about the programme of the Symposium.

The Speakers

Chrisa Papadopoulou, prosecuting lawyer for the victims

Chrisa Papadopoulou is a lawyer, member of the Piraeus Bar Association since 2010. In the trial against Golden Dawn, she represented the family of Pavlos Fyssas, the Greek rap singer murdered by a Golden Dawn operative.

Ioannis Papadopoulos, investigative journalist, Kathimerini

Ioannis Papadopoulos is a feature writer and investigative reporter at the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. He has also worked as a feature writer at the newspaper TA NEA focusing on social issues and immigration.

Ioanna Meitani, Golden Dawn Watch

Ioanna Meitani is a translator of German literature. She has worked as a programme coordinator of the Athens Office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation for seven years. She has been a member of the coordination team of the initiative for monitoring the trial of Golden Dawn, Golden Dawn Watch.

Stefanos Levidis, Forensic Architecture

Stefanos Levidis is a researcher at Forensic Architecture, where he participated in the investigation into the murder of Pavols Fyssas by the Golden Dawn. He is also a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University.

The discussion will be moderated by Nikolas Leontopoulos, a Greek journalist and co-founder of Reporters United.

Collective Intelligence: The Logan Symposium’s theme

The theme of this year’s Symposium is “Collective Intelligence”, a vital concept in an era when public interest investigative reporting confronts new challenges.

Investigative journalism is changing, as are the people and organisations drawn to do it. While the mainstream media struggles with its authority and its business model, investigative reporting is growing in new places, and has discovered fresh allies and intermediaries. From facilities for anonymous online leaks and open-source intelligence tools, to the deployment of artificial intelligence and an energetic new cadre of freelancers and independent researchers, the result has been new sources of expertise and new ways of working, often straddling national and disciplinary borders. This new networked, interdisciplinary intelligence is making journalism smarter.

At the same time, however, the authorities are taking advantage of our organisational disarray by cracking down. From heavy-handed searches of our offices to draconian regimes of electronic surveillance, the last few years have seen the wholesale persecution of technologists, journalists, sources and whistleblowers. Public interest investigative reporting is now on the frontline – and those working in and around it are under unprecedented threat. Journalist-led and curated by the Centre for Investigative Journalism, the 4th CIJ Logan Symposium brings together some of the world’s most formidable and creative investigators to consider how best to take advantage of this new collective intelligence, and how to build better international alliances against the encroachment of surveillance, official secrecy and censorship.

Το άρθρο The Trial of Golden Dawn: A Reporters United panel at the CIJ Logan Symposium εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο R•U.